Prof. Dr. Nazeer Ahmed, PhD
Scholar, scientist, inventor, historian, legislator, Prof. Dr. Nazeer Ahmed is the founder patron of this Encyclopedia. It was his vision to compile a history of Islam from a global perspective, transcending the traditional emphasis on the Middle East. He wrote a two volume treatise, “Islam in Global History…From the Death of the Prophet Muhammed to the First World War” which was serialized in the Minaret Magazine in New York during 1995-1997 and then published by Suhail Academy in Lahore, Pakistan. The book has also been translated into Urdu and published by the Urdu academy in Bangalore, India.
Dr. Ahmed holds a PhD from Cornell University, Ae.E from the California Institute of Technology, MS also from Caltech, MBA from Rider University and BE from the University of Mysore. A brilliant student throughout his career, he is fondly known as “Rank Nazeer” in his native land. He is the director of the American Institute of Islamic History and Culture and also serves on the boards of the World Organization for Resource Development and Education in Washington, DC and HMS Institute of Technology in India. He is an inventor and holds 12 United States patents on spaced based lasers, energy conversion and advanced manufacturing technologies. A space scientist by training, he was a Principal Engineer on the Hubble Space Telescope and was a Team Leader on the Lunar Land Rover, Apollo, Saturn and Space Surveillance projects. He has published scores of scientific articles and has chaired international conferences on high pressure physics. He was an elected member of the Legislative Assembly in Bangalore, India (1977) and has lectured around the world on Islamic History and Science.
Dr. Ahmed is a philanthropist and for decades has supported scholarship programs for needy children and has also built mosques and schools. He was the architect of a unique religious complex near Bangalore which has attracted wide acclaim for its fusion of geometry and spirituality.
Dr. Ahmed is well versed in several languages and has traveled widely in Asia, Europe and Africa. He received his training in Arabic from Molvi Abdul Quddus Qudsi and has remained a keen student of Qur’anic sciences throughout his life. In the year 2000, he met the eminent Shaikh Mohammed Nazim al Haqqani al Qabrasi of Cyprus and Turkey of the most distinguished Naqshbandi Order and received deep spiritual insights from his sohbets. Dr. Ahmed’s book, What Makes Us Human…A Spiritual Perspective was published in 1998 . His lasting achievement is a translation of the Qur’an into easy to read modern American English. The translation was worked on for a period of ten years and was published in 2011. It has earned the commendation of noted ulema from India and has been read on the internet by over 300,000 people around the world.
The compilation of an ambitious work like an encyclopedia is a multi-generation effort. It is the hope of Dr. Ahmed that the effort will continue with contributions from scholars, especially those of future generations.
Prof. Dr. Ibrahim B. Syed, DSc
Dr. Ibrahim B. Syed is a distinguished Radiological/Medical Physicist. He holds a DSc degree in Medical Nuclear physics from the Johns Hopkins University, MSc and BSc degrees from the University of Mysore. He is a Fellow of the American College of Radiology, the American Institute of Chemists, the British Institute of Physics, and the Royal Society of Health.In 1984, he was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from the International University in Malta.
Dr. Syed is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Louisville, Kentucky,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_B._Syed – cite_note-4 and a former Professor of Nuclear Medicine.
He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Health Physics and of the American Board of Radiology, as well as an examiner for both boards. He functioned as a technical expert in nuclear medicine for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He also served as an expert in radiological physics for the United Nations Development Program, visiting postgraduate medical institutions in India over a two-month period.
Dr. Syed is listed in several biographical reference works, including American Men and Women of Science and a number of Marquis Who’s Who publications including Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World.
He is a founder and the current president of the Islamic Research Foundation International (IRFI), headquartered in Louisville, and is a past managing editor of its publication, Aalim. As the Managing Editor, he has posted over 6,000 Islamic articles at the IRFI’s Website: www.irfi.org.
Dr. Syed has written more than 300 articles on a number of Islamic subjects, particularly on Islam and the Qur’an as they relate to science, and in particular Islamic medicine. He is the author of the books Intellectual Achievements of the Muslims (published 2002), and Qur’anic Inspirations (published 2007).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_B._Syed – cite_note-10.
Dr. Ibrahim Gamard, Ph.D.
Dr. Ibrahim Gamard is a Shaykh in the Mawlawi (Mevlevi) Order of Sufism, authorized by Faruk Hemdem Çelebi, the 22nd generation direct descendent of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi and the international leader of the Mawlawi tradition. His affiliation began when he was initiated as a Mevlevi whirler (semazen) in 1976. He converted to Islam in 1984 and went on the Pilgrimage to Mecca in 1999. Dr. Gamard lives in the United States and is a psychologist by profession, but his main passion has been studying Mawlana’s poetry in Persian. He began teaching himself to read Persian in 1981 for the sole purpose of reading Mawlana’s works. In 1985, he met Dr. Rawan Farhadi, an Afghan scholar who was teaching Persian literature at the University of California in Berkeley; that was when Dr. Farhadi suggested that they translate the nearly 2,000 quatrains attributed to Mawlana. After collaborating in their spare time and adding many improvements, their work was finally published as The Quatrains of Rumi (2008). Dr. Gamard is also the author of Rumi and Islam: Selections from His Stories, Poems, and Discourses (2004), translations of verses in which Mawlana praised the noble virtues of the Prophet Muhammad. In 2001, he began a website (http://www.dar-al-masnavi.org) with translations, commentary, and transliterations from Mawlana’s works, plus articles related to the Mawlawi tradition.
